The Dangerous Type

by Loren Rhoads

  “No,” Sloane said coldly. “It’s not enough to stop her from leaving.”

  “She’s leaving because of us, you sparkwit.”

  Sloane’s thoughts leapt to all sorts of conclusions. Eventually he just asked, “What do you mean?”

  “It’s the same reason she kept running from him before. He will kill whoever is in his path to her. You may be jealous, Gavin, but Thallian has murdered hundreds of humans, maybe thousands, as well as the whole species of Templars. He doesn’t care about anything other than himself. And Raena. When he finds her, he’ll find us. She will die to protect us, but she’s afraid that won’t be enough.”

  “I thought . . .”

  Ariel nodded. “She’s not going back because she loves him. She’s going because she hates him.”

  “We can’t let her go.”

  Ariel laughed again, the same brittle sound as before. “I don’t know how we can stop her. But I don’t see why we can’t give her a night to remember us by before she goes.”

  “You know her so well, how do you recommend we do that?”

  “With Raena, if you find something she likes, don’t stop. Especially if you think you’re hurting her. Don’t stop.”

  * * *

  Jimi found Fiana’s instructions clear and easy to follow. The little hopper he’d chosen for his escape was built for short-distance jaunts—say, from planetside to a moon and back—which meant it should handle space and atmospheric re-entry without a fuss. Working from Fiana’s specs and Uncle Aten’s stash of spare parts, Jimi was able to reconfigure the fuel lines and upgrade the engine. It would be cramped inside the hopper’s little cockpit for a longer trip: no amenities, for sure. But thanks to a stranger he met on the interweb, he had a chance to escape his home and his family.

  Except that security was tighter than Jimi had ever known it. Their father had tensed to the breaking point, seeking only a reason to snap. Jimi recognized he’d be killed as a traitor if anyone discovered what he was doing. He definitely didn’t trust any of them to cover his tracks. Desperate, he hoped that someone else would screw up in some way and provide a distraction, so he could fly.

  Until then, he kept his flight bag packed in preparation. He didn’t have much he wanted to remember from this place, but there were games and some music that he treasured and would hate to have to replace. Mostly, he took things that he hoped could easily be translated into money, even if they were antiques.

  He hid the bag separately from the hopper, so it wouldn’t arouse suspicion. For that same reason, he didn’t allow himself to check on his stuff once it was hidden. He’d just have to trust that he’d hear about it if someone found the bag before he fled. He was fairly certain nothing inside it could identify him. It belonged to a boy. Which one would be a matter of speculation.

  Jimi wished again that he had a print of that picture of Fiana. It would have been nice to have a token of his guardian angel. And some way to thank her.

  * * *

  Gavin was toweling his shower-wet hair when he returned to the bedroom. The large lump moving under the covers giggled. The unexpected sound knocked the wind from him. He’d been so focused on Raena—how to distract her and how to control her—that he’d missed the obvious. Maybe keeping her was as simple as making her life fun.

  He wondered how much fun she’d had in her years before Thallian took her in hand. Ariel definitely recognized fun and surely could have afforded it, but had Raena been allowed to choose their diversions? Or had she tagged along faithfully because that was her job and would keep her owners happy?

  He sat in the chair by the bed and listened to the girls whispering and laughing under the blanket. It made him sad that they were so oblivious, even though keeping the news from them had been his choice. Somewhere in the galaxy, Thallian’s family was hunting down and torturing anyone who might have had a connection through Sloane to Raena. He wondered how long he could keep her hidden on Kai, how long he could keep her safe.

  Today, he vowed, they would get out of the hotel room and have fun. When they’d sucked up all the fun that Kai had to offer, they’d find another pleasure planet and begin again. If Raena had to stay in hiding, Sloane vowed that she wouldn’t ever again sink to the depths she’d struggled through on Nizarrh. There had to be a way to keep her hidden in style.

  * * *

  Fun was good in theory, but of course Sloane hadn’t gone so far as to outline the particulars. Raena wasn’t content to be a spectator. She wanted to try the indoor five-diamond slope, the desert rafting, the ocean surfing, the high-rise climbing. She wanted to go everywhere, see everything, and do anything. She devoured Kai like a ripe fruit, letting the juice drain down her chin. Her exuberance pushed Gavin and Ariel, with bodies twenty years her senior, to their limits.

  It was only a matter of time until one of them hurt themselves. Afterward, Ariel wondered if maybe Raena had been testing them, trying to send them a message. They were old now. They couldn’t keep up. They would be liabilities when she faced Thallian. It was necessary she leave them behind.

  Or maybe Ariel gave her sister too much credit for empathy.

  Dark tag seemed to be the most innocuous of the potential diversions. They strapped themselves into flimsy plastic armor that covered their torsos. Fishbowl helmets provided 360-degree night vision, as well as minimal protection for their heads. Once they were garbed, they were released into a dark, cavernous room inside an enormous mirrored maze.

  The goal was to avoid the “monsters” already in the maze and other teams of players armed with light pistols. The light-sensitive armor would hold an image any time a beam of light struck it. Depending on the color the armor turned, blows were either glancing or “mortal.”

  Raena crept ahead, putting her back against the wall at each corner before she peeled around. Her caution seemed exaggerated, until someone popped around a corner they’d already passed and shot Sloane in the back. Five minutes into the game, he was disqualified. It had taken longer to put his armor on.

  After that, Ariel paid more attention. She took point and let Raena watch their backs. The farther they wound into the maze, the more creatures leapt at them. Ariel quickly ran down the charge in her light pistol.

  “Now what do we do?” she muttered.

  “Cheat,” Raena suggested. She pointed up at the top of the maze walls. “Help me up.”

  Ariel cupped her hands together into a stirrup and boosted Raena. The little woman chinned herself up on the edge of the wall, swung her legs over, and stretched down to haul Ariel after her. Her arms felt like cabled steel.

  Ariel struggled to get a seat on the slim edge of the wall. Her life had been relatively active and she considered herself in good shape, but when faced with the paper-thin walls ahead of them, she wasn’t sure she could do this.

  Raena stood up and offered her hand. Ariel took it and crept gingerly to her feet. The wall felt like a knife’s edge under her shoes, but of course Raena stood poised on a pair of outlandishly high heels.

  To take her mind off of the potential for gravity to assert itself in the least convenient way, Ariel said, “Lead on. You’ve got the functional gun.”

  Rather than slide along the top of the wall, Raena turned a silent cartwheel and then started off at a jog.

  Ariel followed more slowly, desperate to keep Raena in sight in the huge, dark room. That meant she was watching her sister and not her feet when the wall turned. Ariel didn’t.

  The fall was only two meters, but the narrow hallway didn’t allow Ariel to get her feet down first to take the shock. She landed hard on her right arm, aggravating the old injury from her first gun-running trip with Gavin during the War. She heard the bone break again. Familiar molten pain gushed down into her fingers and raced up toward her heart. Battle training won out, though. Ariel didn’t make a sound.

  When Raena didn’t come back for her, Ariel got into a crouch with her back against the wall and pushed herself to her feet. Cradling the broken arm
against her chest, she limped back in the direction of the entrance.

  * * *

  “Wow. Have you seen this?” The message rose on Jaden’s computer followed by a pointer. He trailed its lead to a video of the most amazing aerial stunts. A tiny woman in a shimmering mirrored jumpsuit turned lazy rolls and dropped into heart-stopping suicide dives between the towers of some anonymous Templar skyscrapers. They looked like the spires of a termite mound.

  Jaden watched the loop three times in succession before he passed it on to Jarad, seated next to him. Eventually, from the rapt curl of shoulders bending toward screens, Jaden was sure all his brothers were watching the little acrobat do her tricks. She looked as if she had been born to fly. He wondered if she was a teacher, if she could be induced to come to them and give them the sky.

  It was only a matter of time before Jamian passed the link on to Jain, stationed far away with their Uncle Revan. Jain, more than any of them, probably needed a momentary escape from duty.

  Not one of the boys stopped to wonder where the link had come from in the first place.

  * * *

  While Raena continued the game of dark tag, the maze employees insisted on sending Ariel to the hospital. Gavin came along to keep her company as the doctors worked. He didn’t voice his impatience, but his constant jittering made it clear that he felt like one of them should be keeping an eye on Raena.

  To their surprise, she lay sprawled across the hotel bed when they returned, fiddling around with the computer.

  “I’m glad you’re back,” Raena said, getting up to give Sloane a hug. “I’m out of water,” she said, pouting playfully.

  “I’m on it,” Gavin said happily, obviously relieved to find her still around. He kissed her good and hard, then went off on his errand.

  Raena returned to sit in front of the screen. “Feeling better?” she asked.

  Ariel nodded, flexing her fingers. “Good as new, at least until the next time I drop onto this arm. How’d you do in the game?”

  “I took them all out.” Her sister shrugged. “It wasn’t any fun once you guys were gone.”

  Ariel crossed the room to plant a kiss on the fuzzy top of Raena’s head. “That’s the nicest thing anyone’s said to me all day.”

  “That’s because you’ve been hanging around with Gavin all day,” Raena teased.

  Ariel couldn’t respond. Raena’s screen displayed a scatter of images of Thallian and his sons.

  “Sit down,” Raena ordered, taking Ariel by her good elbow and guiding her back to the chair by the bed.

  Ariel’s whole body trembled so much that she was grateful for Raena’s steady hand on her arm. “You’ve found him?” Ariel gasped.

  “Not yet,” Raena said, very calmly. “I’m narrowing my search.”

  “What are all those pictures?”

  “For kids who all look alike, his sons have quite an album on their family channel.” Raena popped up from the arm of the chair to pour some of Gavin’s whiskey into a pair of glasses.

  Ariel took hers, but held it without raising it to her lips. “How did you get through their security so easily?”

  “I spent a lot of time with him. I know how he thinks. Unsurprisingly, he’s trained his clones to think in just the same ways. The rest of the galaxy may have forgotten the keywords, but I knew exactly what to look for. I’ve had nothing else to think about for twenty years.”

  Ariel was so shocked that the words burst out before she’d really thought them through. “You’re not using Thallian’s kids against him?”

  Raena gazed at her, giving her time.

  “They’re children,” Ariel pleaded.

  “So was I,” Raena reminded. “I was eleven when your dad bought me, fourteen when Thallian took me away. Tender years never protected me from the galaxy.”

  Ariel stared at Raena, trying to absorb the justification. Words entirely failed her. She’d known Raena longer than anyone had, but this inability to make her point even considered felt like she confronted a stranger. Ariel didn’t want to believe her sister could be so cold.

  “Thallian will have trained his sons to die for him,” Raena predicted, “just like he trained me. He won’t spare them out of some gauzy idea of the value of childhood.”

  “You’re not him,” Ariel pointed out.

  “Yet,” Raena agreed. And smiled.

  “No. I don’t accept that.”

  Raena went back to the screen and began closing things down.

  “Don’t do your scary bullshit to me,” Ariel said more harshly.

  Raena nodded and turned back around to face her sister. “All right, Ari. You don’t deserve it. But you know me much better than Gavin. Do you think that there is anything in the galaxy you can say to stop what we both know is going to happen?”

  “No,” Ariel admitted.

  “Then let’s hope I find Jonan before he finds me. Let’s hope his kids have the sense to keep out of our way.”

  Ariel gulped the whiskey until the glass was empty.

  * * *

  “Uncle Revan,” Jain said hesitantly into the hall comm outside Revan’s door. The old man had been in his cabin an uncharacteristically long while. Probably Revan had doped himself to sleep, which seemed to be the only way he could unwind. Jain was familiar enough with his father’s moods to think twice before rousing another of the Thallian old guard, but he was even more certain he’d face a beating if he didn’t pass on the information as soon as he could.

  “What is it, Jain?” Revan asked, deep voice as steady as ever.

  “There’s a video the boys sent me,” Jain reported. “A news loop of a sporting event that got disrupted by pranksters. I think you should see it.”

  Revan’s silence was not encouraging.

  “I’m pretty sure it’s the girl we’re looking for.”

  Just when Jain was going to offer to send the link in, Revan’s cabin door opened. “Where did it come from?”

  Guessing at the video’s provenance, Jain said, “Father has the boys scanning the news.”

  “No. Where was it shot?”

  Jain realized he didn’t know. “Come see it,” he asked, covering his tracks. There were times when he could hide behind his sheltered upbringing. “I was hoping you could identify it.”

  Revan stepped backward out of the doorway, allowing the boy into his cabin. The generator leads and alligator clips still lay out on the desk. Jain recognized them, but kept his face impassive. He leaned over the monitor, typed in the string, and brought up the video of the girl in flight.

  “She’s young,” he said apologetically, “but the engineer Lim said the Templar stone kept everything sealed inside it incorrupt.”

  When the short video ran its course, Revan said, “Again.”

  Jain reached forward and made it play once more. He’d already watched the loop a dozen times, each time growing in certainty that this was their quarry. Now he watched his uncle’s face rather than the monitor. Revan’s attention was riveted.

  Revan said, “That Templar architecture in the background is fairly distinctive. We’re looking for a pleasure planet somewhere that’s populous enough that she could travel there anonymously. The city lies between a desert and the ocean. Start looking for vacation resorts that fit those criteria. If you can identify one with a recent jetpack race, that will lead us to her.”

  Jain nodded sharply and went to do as he was told. As he left the cabin, he heard Revan reach out and start the video again. He wondered if his uncle took any joy in the girl’s aerobatics or, for that matter, any joy in her sleek, muscular form. All his life, Jain had known Revan as an ascetic, forbidden by family doctrine to mate. Would the old man take some pleasure from the girl once she was their prisoner? Would he at least turn his back and allow Jain to? What was the point of hunting down girls who would wear garments like the mirrored jumpsuit if you didn’t put them to use afterward?

  Jain hoped his uncle would forgive him a momentary detour, just long enoug
h to get his mind back on business. Surely Revan had been young once, too. Jain ducked into his own cabin but didn’t turn on the light.

  * * *

  Sloane got the girls dressed up and out to dinner. Seeing as it was the only meal they would eat in this stretch of daylight, he didn’t see why they shouldn’t splurge. He took them to Fire.

  Despite the pyrotechnics put on by the tableside chefs, Ariel seemed preoccupied. Sloane wondered if she’d checked in with Kavanaugh or flicked on the news, but Raena was in high spirits to the point of silliness. She was totally taken with having her food set aflame before her eyes.

  Sloane decided to just relish Raena’s enjoyment and let Ariel join in when she felt up to the task. When she didn’t bring up the slaughter, Sloane wondered if maybe it was just the hours or the drinking catching up to Ariel. She wasn’t as young as she used to be. He’d probably read too much into Ariel’s funk.

  When Raena suggested a sunset walk on the beach, that seemed like the perfect way to pass the time until they could all go back to bed.

  * * *

  On the comm, Revan looked haggard, his gray pallor emphasizing the redness of his eyes. “We’re closing in on her,” he reported.

  The boys burst into cheers, which elicited a smile from their uncle on the screen.

  “How close?” Jonan demanded.

  Revan sent over the video of the girl in the mercury-colored jumpsuit, soaring between the Templar skyscrapers on cobbled-together wings. “Jain recognized her from the video Jamian sent him,” Revan said over the pictures. “We’ve identified the buildings as Kai City.”

  “How long ago was she there?” Jonan insisted, leaning toward the screen as if to shake the answer out of his brother.

  “Yesterday. She and some other pranksters disrupted a sky race in Kai City.” Revan’s voice held notes of pride and relief.

  “Was she bound by law?” Jonan asked.

  “Not yet. In fact, several sports organizations are trying to contact her to offer her contracts.”